


Adamant

by pridecookies



Category: Adament
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:54:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28358880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pridecookies/pseuds/pridecookies
Summary: Hawke returns from the events of Skyhold, needing a healer's touch.
Relationships: Anders/Hawke (Dragon Age), Anders/Male Hawke
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Adamant

Malcolm didn’t give Anders a chance to breathe when he walked in the door, he didn’t seem to have the patience and he didn't have the time. Months away were compounded by the events tangled within those numbered days, every one of them more acutely agonizing than the last. Anders knew. He read Malcolm’s letter, quietly. The Calling, the Wardens, the Nightmare, Corypheus. Seeing the mage rebellion falter and fall apart. Malcolm tried to fold that truth into something sweet but it was bitter still. Tucking it into himself and growing weak over the tears Anders knew Malcolm had shed, grieving that he was grieving as if this was his fault. It pained him that it pained Malcolm, holding burdens he didn’t need to carry. Anders spent years tethered to the Champion’s inescapable pull. There was a chant that echoed in his mind like a canticle in a chantry, freely floating. It repeated cyclically, he understood intimately, he lived it daily. It was love for the man that would burn nations to keep him.

When Malcolm came home, Anders' lungs were robbed before he had the chance to steel them. There was nothing but a burst of light as the door opened and a pair of hands he knew well grasping at his face like they were the only anchor point in a perilous storm. Perhaps they were. Lips colliding, mouth hot and prying his open with ferocity. He felt like he could faint but his own breathlessness wasn’t what concerned him. It was Malcolm’s. He was shaking, rattling like an abandoned lamb. Ragged and clawing at Anders’ clothes like he was going to die if he didn’t get them off soon. The expression on Malcolm’s face was a desolate one, needing so badly to be wanted by him, pleading silently to be loved by him, asking for healing. The Nightmare hadn't quite fled.

“Love, wait—” Anders spoke against lips that wouldn’t release his. 

“ _Please, Anders_ ,” Malcolm begged, voice breaking, clutching him with fingers that needed to desperately brush skin, “ _Just touch me. Please_.”

So, Anders did what he knew so well to do. He offered healing without equal and gave pieces up himself to bandage the broken bits. With an equivalent urgency, he allowed the other mage to express himself the way he knew he needed to, what came naturally, what he couldn’t live without. Malcolm continued in his aggression, touching him with a flushed fury that was more intense than he had experienced in recent memory. Anders knew that in some part, the love he made to him would be broken. The shock to his system, like throwing a barely woken man into cold water, needed to be soothed. Mages and their plight always did make Malcolm quiver in a way that Anders understood, he had been there. It was part of them. He knew that Adamant had ripped pieces of his mind away and he was still clutching at kindness to repair them. Malcolm wrote him, sparing details but he knew him well enough to read through the nearly ineligible script that he was scared, that he saw things in the Fade and with the Wardens that disturbed him. Malcolm was so rarely afraid but he trembled now at the weight of what he had wrought.

They had never been apart this long, he expected Malcolm would have little interest in romantics when was in his arms again, it would be ravaging and hungry and desperate and he would not only oblige it but he would reciprocate it in kind. He wasn’t whole without him. When his pieces came back in the door, safely returning from Adamant, he could finally relax for the first time in months. It was the love he wanted, communicated with breathless lips and a desire to take and be taken. Malcolm didn’t cease in his desperate assault on every inch of him, removing clothes with trembling hands, finding a surface, quelling the need by fulfilling it. There was no place on Anders left untouched by Malcolms’ lips, there was no space left empty, there was nothing hidden. It was displayed with so much raw, visceral need that it left them shaking and panting and flushed. Anders could feel how violently Malcolm’s heart was beating, words whispered with heat in his ears were spoken in rhythm to its cadence. 

_Maker, I missed you._

_I love you, I can’t bear it._

_I am never leaving you again, Anders._

He left Malcolm sleeping. Spent, comfortable, safe. His, wholly. Anders watched him for a while, brown hair tangled on the pillow, their sheets ruffled, his chest steadily moving up and down as he breathed evenly. He went outside and sat on the porch and observed the pink hues as the day began to dim, sights kept open to him. No walls to hold the warmth of the sun at bay, no Templars to watch his time in the garden. _Free_. Then, Anders heard Malcolm stir. He sat there, bathed in the golden light of the setting sun and waited. Malcolm came out and leaned against the open doorway, watching him with a peaceful expression on his face. It had been years and still, Anders’ breath caught in his throat when he threw him a signature grin, even if it was saddled with something more painful as it was now. There was so much love in Malcolm’s expression. It was devastating in a way that he was happy to have waited for.

“Sleep well?” Anders murmured, holding a hand out, asking for the other mage to grasp it. Malcolm did, holding it tightly and kneeling down in front of him, resting his head in Anders’ lap. He played with his hair and waited for Malcolm to be ready to ask to heal him again. And he would. Always.


End file.
